When DVC English instructor James O’Keefe, hit “send” on an e-mail to colleagues June 12, he never imagined the “reply” would be an investigation into his conduct by district lawyers.

At the time, O’Keefe had just added the 37th name to a “wait list” of summer-session students wanting to add to his already full, online creative writing class. And he was critical of DVC administrators’ refusal to add extra sections of in-demand courses.

What would be the “ethical implications,” O’Keefe wrote in his e-mail, of taking his list of 37 names to another Bay Area college and teaching creative writing online “to these students – same cost to student, higher pay for instructor than teaching in the [Contra Costa Community College District], of course….

“Just b/c DVC and CCCD are in no-growth modes, students shouldn’t suffer. After all, we’re really all about changing lives. Even our own.”

Only two fellow English teachers responded briefly to O’Keefe’s message, posted to the English department list-serv, and he thought the matter was closed.

That was, until a month later, when he received a letter from the district’s attorneys, Atkinson, Anderson, Loya, Rudd & Romo of Pleasanton, demanding that he contact them immediately to discuss the content of his email.

“I was kind of surprised and a little intimidated,” said O’Keefe in a recent telephone interview.

He said he promptly contacted and cooperated with the law firm. The paralegal he spoke It was after this conversation, O’Keefe said he learned the investigation had begun after his dean, Krista Johns, forwarded the June 12 e-mail with his name still attached to Susan Lamb, vice president of Academic Affairs.

“As there was a good bit of energy around the issue, I chose to ask if there was an official position. My purpose in asking was so that I could relay the information back to the 02 English discussion,” explained Johns in an email to O’Keefe.

In a recent interview with the Inquirer, Johns further explained that she had only forwarded O’Keefe’s June 12 email because she felt that it would more effectively elicit a response than a general question would.

“It’s hard to have the district listen and discuss hypothetical issues to avoid accidental missteps,” Johns said, “It’s because they are dealing with a lot of immediate issues.”

While Johns acknowledges not having removed O’Keefe’s name from the e-mail before forwarding it, she said she also did not anticipate the district’s response.

“I didn’t hear back on the matter until learning– about the same time James learned– that the district’s legal counsel was involved (about a month after the discussion on 02English and my e-mail to Susan),” explained Johns in an e-mail sent to the English department list-serv on July 25.

In an earlier email to O’Keefe, Johns also raised concerns over whether his suggestion of taking displaced students to another college would violate student confidentiality.

O’Keefe disputes the notion that confidential information would have been passed either to himself or to any other college by him.

While in the e-mail O’Keefe alluded to having taken the list to another college, he maintains it was never his intention to do so and his email was only meant to draw attention to his concern over the college’s refusal to add the additional sections needed to effectively serve DVC’s students.

“If I were a taxpayer in this district I’d be appalled at both the mis-use of personnel in pursuing an investigation and the refusal to serve students through increasing course offerings,” said O’Keefe in an email sent to the English Division.

O’Keefe received a letter saying the investigation had been successfully resolved and thanking him for his cooperation.However, to date, no one has explained to him what the ethical issue would be or what policy he supposedly violated, O’Keefe said.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Marleen Sacks, an attorney with the district’s law firm, would not reveal the specifics of the investigation into O’Keefe’s e-mail.

“When we do investigations into employee misconduct, [it] doesn’t necessarily involve violation of rules and regulations,” Sacks said.

Such “misconduct,” she added, “can involve violations of common sense, violations of rules of appropriate civil conduct; it can include errors in judgment, so we aren’t necessarily looking for violations of specific rules and procedures.”

This was confirmed by District Director of Communication Tim Leong. “I don’t have the specific policy number or name but I think it’s fair to say that [the investigation was] about respecting and trying to protect the district and the college,” Leong said in a phone interview.

O’Keefe is a former English department chairperson who was narrowly defeated in 2006 for president of the teachers’ union, the United Faculty. He is not teaching this semester because of illness.

“They did it to me, so they could do it to anybody,” O’Keefe said. “I hope the faculty aren’t intimidated and don’t start self censoring, if they have a critique to make of district policy.”